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by ReverendBayes 4016 days ago
Really? You cannot imagine any scenario where employment approaches zero other than the robotic-utopia scenario? We have no historical example of employment approaching double digits without societal problems ensuing? The higher the unemployment, the closer to robo-utopia, in a smooth, monotonic fashion, right?
1 comments
yummyfajitas 4016 days ago
I'm aware of situations where consumption and employment dropped. But in this thread, we are very specifically discussing a situation where employment (a cost) dropped and consumption (a benefit) increased.

If you want to argue that consumption has dropped, do it. So far no one else here has.

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aswanson 4016 days ago
Dude, you're going no true scotsman with bringing consumption in. Where did anyone in this thread bring in that as part of the argument other than you?

What was asked was is an approach to zero unemployment ok, and could you imagine any vectors of approach to that condition being bad, and do we have any negative societal examples at or about that state of affairs? The answer is obvious, meaning we have more data points about that situation than your proposed robo-utopia as the only convergent solution, and since we have data on that condition, states resembling it are far more probable than your proposed unitary ideal.

Idealism should always be suspect in things involving humans: economics, philosophy, ideals, political parties...anything involving large sums of humans that proposes the exact solution should always be looked at as extremely suspect. Political romanticism and One True Answers are the historical places where the body bags are. I distrust pure libertarianism, pure socialism, pure democracy, and any political philosophy that promises me A Perfect World.

I say that as a strong political supporter of both Ron and Rand Paul.

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yummyfajitas 4016 days ago
Scroll up - we aren't discussing possible approaches to a hypothetical world with zero jobs at all. We are discussing the actual outcome of globalization so far, which is more goods and services with less work required on our part.

It was Aswanson who raised the apocalyptic scenario of no jobs, presumably because all our material needs are taken care of by robots or Chinese people, not me.

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aswanson 4015 days ago
Scroll up - we aren't discussing possible approaches to a hypothetical world with zero jobs at all. We are discussing the actual outcome of globalization so far, which is more goods and services with less work required on our part.

Not even close. That's your current redefintion of the argument. Scroll up. The thread started off as a set of defensive/offensive prescriptions given the current macro state of affairs, which led to the labor implications of free trade, which led to your utopian exposition of the only possible configuration of free labor. You were asked about other possible configurations of this state, and no apocalypse was mentioned at all.

In addition, you ended with the only way this could happen would be if the chinese and robots take care of everything, and nothing could possibly ever go wrong along that direction of displacement of the workforce...because...because...I dunno...libertarianism. So, asking again, do we have evidence of the robot/Chinese paradise being the only end-game, or are there other paths that things can evolve into?

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